One Man’s Sewage

Published June 15, 2009 by Benjamin Tseng

… is another man’s gold.

Every investor dreams to find something that nobody wants (and hence are willing to part with cheaply) and be able to turn it into something that everyone wants (and hence something you can sell for a lot). Well, a prefecture in Japan stumbled on just that. From the always amusing Reuter’s Oddly Enough:

A sewage treatment facility in central Japan has recorded a higher gold yield from sludge than can be found at some of the world’s best mines. An official in Nagano prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, said the high percentage of gold found at the Suwa facility was probably due to the large number of precision equipment manufacturers in the vicinity that use the yellow metal. The facility recently recorded finding 1,890 grammes of gold per tonne of ash from incinerated sludge.

That is a far higher gold content than Japan’s Hishikari Mine, one of the world’s top gold mines, owned by Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd, which contains 20-40 grammes of the precious metal per tonne of ore.